The Chronicle of Higher Education: The General Who Got the Air Force Academy Talking About Sexual Assault
By Sarah Brown, The Chronicle of Higher Education/Published April 02, 2017
In her first address to cadets as superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Gen. Michelle D. Johnson zeroed in on a topic that few want to discuss: sexual assault and harassment.
It was the fall of 2013, and as the first woman to lead one of the nation’s five federal military academies, General Johnson was adamant that the cadets, faculty members, and leadership needed to have frank conversations about sexual misconduct and “be open to being uncomfortable.” Soon after starting the job, the general hired two new victim advocates and ensured that those who experienced sexual assault would have access to support and resources 24/7.
Then, during her first year as superintendent, a pair of investigations by the Colorado Springs Gazette lent a new urgency to her efforts. The newspaper uncovered a hard-partying culture among a group of cadets, many of them star football players, in which they binge drank, took drugs, and were accused of having used date-rape drugs to sexually assault women.
The behavior was largely brought to light by cadets acting as undercover informants. They had provided information to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations as part of a sting known as Operation Gridiron that led to several sexual-assault and drug convictions.
One of the informants, Eric Thomas, told the newspaper that the academy treated his informant work as a string of conduct violations and expelled him, before General Johnson took over. (Academy officials have said the cadet was kicked out for a pattern of misconduct.)
The revelations led to months of scrutiny surrounding the academy, its treatment of athletes who faced disciplinary violations, and its handling of sexual assault — including a review of the athletic department by the Air Force’s inspector general and a finding by a Pentagon-led inquiry that the academy’s former superintendent had hindered a probe into athlete misconduct.
General Johnson says she’s worked to correct those wrongs and to promote a culture of respect during her four years in the academy’s top job. She hired a new director of culture and climate to work within the athletic department and says all athletes now take part in an educational program on healthy relationships.
She spoke to The Chronicle about her experience as a woman in the academy, her outspokenness on sexual assault, and what she’s done to improve her institution’s campus climate.
When you started at the academy, in 1977, you were part of the second coed class, which was 12-percent female. How did your experience as a cadet inform the perspective you bring to your leadership role?
It was a bit of a shock to be confronted with people who said by my mere presence I was lowering standards. They didn’t want us here. That was officers and cadets.
Fortunately, I could do the brochure. I was a Rhodes Scholar, I was the first woman cadet wing commander, and I was an Academic All-American basketball player. So I could do it. And the beauty of military service is that it’s very operational and it’s competency-based. If you can do the work, fly the plane — planes don’t really care what you look like or where you came from — you earn the respect of your colleagues. That’s ultimately what we need from each other, respect, so that when we’re in harm’s way we know people will come through.
The other thing that’s helped me in the long run is that I understand what it feels like to be “other,” to be treated like some other for things over which I have no control. And I hope that’s shaped my outlook for diversity.
When you brought up sexual assault in your first address to the cadets, what sort of message were you hoping to send?
My purpose was to say, I shouldn’t be the only one talking about this with the media. We need to understand as an institution what leads to this and then create a climate of respect. We’re trying to produce not just undergraduate-degree holders, but lieutenants in the Air Force who respect the dignity of others. A person of character doesn’t harm someone else, doesn’t violate their personal boundaries, doesn’t discriminate against somebody else. So one of my first targets was to try to have us own this institutionally, so that faculty members felt prepared to reinforce in conversations what we’re trying to achieve and develop in leaders of character.
One of the elements of the academy that we’ve really focused on — and I think we’ve made great strides in — I’m really proud of our athletic department now. Some of our coaches initially did not understand that they aren’t there just to coach a sport, they’re also going to help develop leaders of character. As we’ve had them be engaged in these conversations, those are great settings, small groups of peers who can have conversations about healthy relationships.
It’s slow going, and it’s hard to measure success on those fronts, but we think because of the nature of the conversations that we’re starting to have and the way that the faculty has owned it and that cadets have owned it, it’s encouraging.
So from your perspective, your frank message about sexual misconduct has been well received?
I think it has, and what we’re trying to figure out now is a balance. Cumbersome PowerPoint presentations aren’t the way to go. We also need to be open to being uncomfortable.
I spoke to the Nacda, the National Association of College Directors of Athletics, last summer. There were 3,800 people in the room. I said, I’m at a wonderful institution and these are great kids and they go off and do heroic things. But guess what? And I threw up the headlines that we’ve had. If it could happen to us, maybe it could happen to you.
People are really uncomfortable when I talk that way. But that’s one part of being uncomfortable: You can’t fix it if you can’t talk about it.
During your time as a cadet, was sexual assault talked about?
No. It’s not in huge numbers — but we want it to be zero, of course. Just to give you a sense of scope and scale, when we do anonymous surveys of what the prevalence is on a spectrum of harm from unwanted touching to forcible penetration, about 3.5 percent say that something like that has happened with them.
That’s not zero, and we want the reporting to be closer to that. But that’s our scope. We’re not talking 80 percent or something. Sometimes we tar institutions unfairly. Nevertheless, that small number is unacceptable.
It’s hard to say how it really was when I was here because people didn’t talk about it. The more overt stuff you could really see coming. The other things that happened, I kind of learned from friends over the years, and again it’s not so widespread that we’d want to tar everybody. At least we’re in a place now where we can talk about it.
What do you mean by “tar institutions unfairly”?
At the service academies we’re required to report annually to Congress on our sexual-assault-prevention efforts, the number of reports of sexual assault, and the prevalence of sexual assault. We measure prevalence by using an anonymous survey, and while our participation rate is high on the survey, which improves accuracy, the terminology is problematic.
The survey uses the term “unwanted sexual contact” to describe all events on the continuum of harm, from an unwanted kiss to rape. And while we understand that an unwanted kiss can be traumatic to some, using that broad of a brush to describe sexual assault removes valuable context. Categorizing by type of assault — unwanted touching, nonpenetration, penetration — would be more instructive.
How is the academy’s culture for women different now than when you were a cadet?
When I talk to 20-year-olds, what makes me feel encouraged and warm inside is, what I faced is not what they’re facing — this overt judgment of “you don’t belong here.” We’re at about 25 percent women now, and the last two classes we’ve entered are closer to 30 percent.
What’s different, though, is this constant presence of the social media and the anonymous environments. The pressure is different and less overt in a way, but maybe more insidious. And it requires us to address it differently.
How are you dealing with that issue?
When the cadets realized we were tracking Yik Yak, they started going to Yodel. There’s a small percentage of people who write ugly things, and it disturbs our cadets. We have 4,000 cadets. If 10 or 20 do something, it can come to the attention of all of them.
We challenge our cadets to say, what does a person of character do in an anonymous environment? Do you let that horrible negative stuff stand, or do you try to nullify it? We try to be very upfront about that.
In terms of confronting sexual assault, what challenges are you facing that are unique to military academies, versus other college campuses?
I’m going to flip your question, if that’s OK. I was at a conference recently with the Navy superintendent, and some of the leaders from higher ed were talking to us afterward. They said they actually think we have an advantage here, because we have a moral compass.
We have an honor code that goes beyond just academic honor, and we have these discussions about what leaders of character do. It’s a rallying cry to say, “A leader of character treats people with respect.” We also have law enforcement, so we have due process baked in. In that way, we’re resourced a bit better, maybe, than civilian colleges.
What’s hard for military academies is, we’re held to a higher standard. And rightly so — we don’t want to deviate from that. At the same time, we have ways to try to tackle this procedurally that might actually be pretty constructive.
You said the academy is still around 25 percent women, while on many college campuses women are often half of the student body or more. Does that imbalance make it more difficult to create a safe culture for women?
The numbers would maybe make you ask that. But I’ve talked to other college presidents where there might be 60 percent women. I’ve said, “Is your sexual-assault dynamic that much different?” And they’ve said, “Not really.” It’s a communication thing — it’s a dynamic of how people should understand boundaries and healthy relationships. I was hoping that when I talked to a college president who has enrolled more women than men, that might somehow have made it better, and I haven’t heard that.
During your second academic year leading the academy, there was a pretty drastic spike in sexual-assault reports: 49 in 2014-15, versus 25 the year before that. In 2015-16, there were 32 reports. What do those numbers suggest?
Our numbers have fluctuated, I think more than the other academies. But the trend is up, which gives us hope.
We’re trying to figure out the holistic narrative to this. For instance, if there’s a difficult case that goes to court and the accused is acquitted, does that have an impact on reporting? And it could, depending on the way the victim feels that process has played out.
Also, we have young people, and if they’ve never been around the judicial system, which is fairly hard to understand, they may say, “So if someone is acquitted, does that mean the victim’s allegations weren’t true?” It’s hard to explain that not guilty isn’t the same as innocent — that becomes part of the education we provide.
Where do you think sexual-assault cases should be adjudicated, on campuses or in the courts?
Service academies are unique in that we are institutions of higher education and, at the same time, military institutions. So as military organizations, we are responsible for good order and discipline and adjudicating these cases within the Uniformed Code of Military Justice.
The idea of good order and discipline is being able to not only take something into the legal system if the victim is willing and the evidence stands up, but to also be able to administer discipline on other fronts, because somebody who has potentially wronged someone on this front maybe actually isn’t following the rules in other areas as well. And if we can be rehabilitative, we’ll do that. That’s one of the advantages to being a commander and a college president at the same time.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.
This article is part of: The Chronicle Interviews
A version of this article appeared in the April 7, 2017 issue.